House Bill Introduced to Make it Harder for Feds to Take Your Stuff

A Republican congressman from Michigan has
introduced a House version of
legislation to reform the federal government’s highly abused
asset forfeiture regulations. It’s not Justin Amash, as we might
expect, but Tim Walberg, a strong religious and national security
conservative who is also concerned about the abuse of federal
authority. He couches his concerns in terms of the
IRS abusing businesses as opposed to law enforcement officials
snatching cash from people at traffic stops:

H.R. 5212 was introduced in direct response to several recent
stories involving innocent property owners having their property
seized by federal officials.  In Michigan, a longtime grocer,
Terry Dehko, had his bank accounts seized by IRS because they
suspected him of being a money launderer.  The charges were
never filed but Mr. Dehko had to prove that his money was not used
in a criminal enterprise.

“This legislation provides commonsense reforms to restore the
balance of power away from the government and back to protecting
individual rights and due process.  We cannot abide a system
where citizens fear that law enforcement can seize, forfeit and
profit from their property,” Walberg stated.

Walberg’s legislation has some differences from legislation
recently introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Scott Alexander
Meiner at
Americans for Forfeiture Reform makes some comparative notes.
 Like Paul’s
Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, Walberg’s
bill increases the threshold for attempting to seize property from
the “preponderance of evidence” standard to the “clear and
convincing evidence” standard that the property being seized was
connected to a crime. However, Meiner notes, Walberg’s bill does
not attempt to eliminate the twisted incentives for government
officials to try and seize property by shifting the assets gained
from the Department of Justice to the Department of the Treasury.
Arguably, that shift may well be more important than changing the
threshold of proof, because of the significant leeway judges give
law enforcement and federal officials to do whatever the heck they
want. Judges usually haven’t been a good check on police power in
decades. At least removing the profit motive would have an
impact.

Meiner provides some more analysis of Walberg’s bill
here. And in about half an hour Walberg will be joining former
Reason Editor (and current Washington Post blogger)
Radley
Balko and Scott Bullock, senior attorney for the Institute of
Justice, at the Heritage Foundation for a discussion
about asset forfeiture reform. Details here.